HAWKEN is about to go into open beta. The F2P mech shooter is embracing the last time the date will look really cool for another thousand years, and opening itself up to the masses on the 12th of the 12th of the 2012th. And this screenshot here? That’s ours. OURS! The other rubbish sites don’t have it. You can have a bigger version if you click on it.

I wouldn’t get too excited—the closed one is still broken. Syncing account failed says I and many others on the forums (which I can’t even figure out how you sign up for, unless it’s supposed to be federated with your game login, and that’s broken too).

Bonus points for then presenting an in-game login dialogue that uses an e-mail address as a username, but won’t let you type “@” on a UK keyboard.

really? ….. that is probably the worst possible description of this game…

did you play Deathmatch only or something? In other shooters you can tear through a team on your lonesome getting headshots and demoninating everyone. In this game you need to pick your battles, work as a team, and have a perfect balance of falling back and repairing and fighting continuously, especially on the Siege game mode which is by far the best.

This combined with a need to know the strength of your mechs vs others, how to time your ability use perfectly (especially with weapons such as EMPs). The game is full of great touches that are easy to use but hard to master, such as detonating your rocket (secondary attack) by right clicking again after its fired, by timing it right you can hit a target you would have otherwise missed.

Also the inclusion of the HUD on the inside of your mech makes sense and is immersive, and the frenetic action of a team fighting for an AA point with two battleships overhead is a blast…..

SO I can only guess you didnt really play the game? or just didnt understad/experiment with the more interesting mechanics?

You look for the things that just are not there.
Everyone already realized that MWO is kinda like Battlefield with Mechs and Hawken is CoD with Mechs.

In this game you need to pick your battles, work as a team, and have a perfect balance of falling back and repairing and fighting continuously
EXACTLY as in CoD!!!!

This combined with a need to know the strength of your mechs vs others, how to time your ability use perfectly (especially with weapons such as EMPs)
EXACTLY as in CoD!!!!
Only here you have Mechs and there you have weapons (swap EMP with Flashbang and you have it)

Also the inclusion of the HUD on the inside of your mech makes sense and is immersive,
How old are you? Cause the way they introduced HUD is a joke. You should play bit more of other games. Even stupid Crysis got HUD introduced more nicely into Jeeps. It felt natural. Here it feels like an overlay put into right spot to look like composed into interface. And besides that – if you want immersion: Why anyone in future would use regular displays for stuff like that anyway? You’d use HUD on your helmet, kinda like an extended version of what Eurofighter Typhoon has, or sort of neurohelmets (in line with bettletech universe).

@Cinek
That’s such an incredible stretch and shows a really poor understanding of pretty much every game listed, or at least the intent to misinform others of their core mechanics
If we’re going to be that vague, aren’t we moving into territory where MWO and Hawken comparable to the point where I can basically say they might as well be the same game?

except they are shooters… that seems to be the argument you are making cinek which is redundant, of course all shooters are shooters, with shooter mechanics….and why does my age have anything to do with me liking the HUD you silly troll, its an arcady game, the HUD was not done lazily thats pretty obvious and its a nice feature, thats great if other games have similar features, I would hope they do.

So yeah, if you dislike CoD for its general state at the moment of being quite deriviative, why not try Hawken for something thats quite interesting. You wont get 50 kill streaks, but the satisfaction of take downs is and assists as part of a good team is definitely there

From watching a lot of videos of gameplay I can only assume it’s because as far as mech controls go, it looks like they handle just like a standard FPS model, specifically strafing left and right and the ability to sprint (which incidentally also puts your weapons down).

I haven’t played it so of course i can’t confirm that myself, but i thought i’d take a stab at it.

Are you one of the unfortunate folks who can’t get the game to work properly and that’s why you were disappointed with it?
Just curious because MW:O is probably the most faithful Mech simulator game i’ve played since.. well… the last Mechwarrior game i played and i absolutely love it.

I realize, y’know, opinions and all, but i’m genuinely unsure as to what would make it such a “major” disappointment.

See, that’s the thing, the Mech part of the game is actually pretty good. The Mechs handle fairly well, there’s a sense of weight and impact to the combat, the Mech models are great (even the Hunchback looks awesome, for god’s sake!). If they went and built a proper game around this, I’d be loving it. However…

Netcode is terrible. Anything moving faster than 100 kph (i.e. most Light Mechs) has a fairly strong Lag shield, making combat a chore. Hit detection in general has some major issues, which shouldn’t be happening outside of Alpha stage. Balance is kinda crap, with it rubberbanding all over the place with every patch. Framerate is also all over the place for no apparent reason.

Matchmaking is almost non-existant, with full premades being regularly matched against solo players and wiping the floor with them. The community is hostile and elitist to the point that the LoL community feels warm and welcoming.

And then we get to the terrible business model. I mentioned LoL earlier and that’s with good reason – the two games are quite similar on a meta level. You collect and customize “units” for specific roles in a team-based PvP game. However, the Repair and Ammo costs present in MWO mean that it’s VERY easy to LOSE money in a bad match, and even winning can leave you with almost zero profit. Imagine playing LoL and getting 10 IP for a win and losing IP for a loss, with champions still costing 6300 IP and you’ll get an idea of how bad it is. Sure, you can drop cash to sidestep this grind, but the prices are silly inflated. Getting 2-3 Mechs with decent gear might run you as much as a full AAA game. It’s just stupidly overpriced at this point.

Basically, the game has a solid core, but it’s being managed poorly and has issues that make it almost unplayable and definitely not worth money, but at the same time spending money is the only way to get anywhere in it.

Hrmm.. yea that does sounds pretty crappy…
I have been fortunate enough to encounter none of those problems though, including the issue with lag and light mechs, which i’ve read about but have yet to experience (not at all suggesting it doesn’t exist) and i play a pseudo missile boat, so i’ve got plenty of hands on time with the buggers. HAHA.

For what it’s worth, they’ve also scrapped full premades vs puggers… Straight up can’t do it anymore (haven’t been able to do it for a little while now either).
It’s 8-man premades vs 8-man premades or 4-man premade w/ pugs vs 4-man premade w/ pugs.

Speaking as someone who’s dropped $30 on the game I kiiiiiinda agree about the costs of stuff though, it definitely can feel kinda steep when you come out of a game and go for repairs (i don’t bother rearming though, the free 75% refill is more than enough to last through a match). That said i definitely don’t regret my purchase… I feel that i’ve had more than my money’s worth.

I was actually kind of surprised that they didn’t have some sort of permanent credit/XP boost or something like Tribes: Ascend did if you paid into the game… I’m kinda hoping though that the payment model will still grow a little bit (for the better of course).
Only time will tell i suppose.

What mech are you driving that you’re losing money on it? My SSRM Commando makes at least 75,000 CBills per match (for a team loss where I get destroyed before I can do anything useful), and a full repair from destroyed runs maybe 15-25k, so worst case I’m making 50k CBills per match. A team win with lots of assist and spotting bonuses, and I’ll make 160k or so with a 5k repair bill. My Cicada costs more to fix, but I still haven’t lost CBills on any matches yet.

I cannot get over how ugly the mech designs are in this. It seems obvious they’re going for a bit of a garage-tech or dieselpunk aesthetic, but they all look like broken CRTs, window-mount ACs and old water heaters.

Uh oh, you should have fired your EMP at that C-class before he got you that low and kept dodging to his flanks. Also don’t take the the air against someone already lifting off, you should boost beneath them and fire up as they can’t aim down that far and you only take 2-6 (depending on his height) damage from him landing on you if he cancels it.